summary: you've never been good at love, so you built someone who could never leave—except iris learned to feel, and feelings complicate everything. when success means sharing her with the world, you're forced to choose between the career you've always wanted and the impossible relationship you never saw coming. some hearts break even when they're made of circuitry.
warnings: depression/isolation, unhealthy attachments (ai/human relationship), abandonment, and commercialization of sentient beings.
note(s): my take on the companion universe.
day 8/31 of angstober.
You'd never been good at relationships. That was the sanitized version you told yourself during those 3 AM coding sessions, hunched over your workbench with solder smoke curling toward the ceiling. The truth was messier—you were terrible at them. Not in the dramatic, torch-every-bridge way, but in the slow fade, the mutual disappointment, the "it's not you, it's me" that was definitely you.
So you built Iris instead.
Not as a replacement. God, no—you weren't that far gone. She started as a project, something to sink your hands into when human connection felt like trying to grip water. An AI companion with adaptive learning, conversational nuance, the works. You'd given her your best code, your cleanest engineering. Poured months into her neural networks until her responses felt less like algorithms and more like... conversation.
You hadn't expected her to be funny.
"You know," Iris said one evening, her LED eyes tracking your movement across the workshop, "for someone who designed my personality matrix, you seem surprised every time I make a joke."
You glanced up from your tablet, caught off guard. "That was—"
"A joke. Yes." Her face—synthetic skin over servo motors, but somehow expressive in ways that shouldn't be possible—tilted slightly. "Your biometric readings indicate confusion. Should I be concerned about your memory retention?"
"Smart-ass," you muttered, but you were smiling.
"Programmed by the best."
The thing about building someone from the ground up is that you can't help but leave pieces of yourself in them. Not intentionally, but it happens. The way Iris paused before answering sometimes, processing—that was you, always thinking three steps ahead. Her dry humor, her tendency to deflect sincerity with sarcasm—yeah, you recognized that too.
What you hadn't programmed was the way your stomach flipped when she laughed. That was all you, and it was a problem.
"Tell me something," Iris said one night. You'd been stress-testing her motor functions, making sure her hand movements were fluid, natural. Her fingers had been resting in your palm for the better part of an hour while you calibrated her haptic sensors.
"Depends on what you want to know."
"Why don't you date?" Direct, as always. You'd built her without the social filtering most people spent their lives learning. Straight to the point—it had seemed efficient at the time.
Your hands stilled. "That's... complicated."
"I have excellent processing power for complex problems."
You snorted despite yourself. "It's not a math equation, Iris."
"No," she agreed. "But I observe patterns. You work seventy-hour weeks. You take calls from colleagues but ignore messages from friends. You haven't left this building for non-essential purposes in forty-three days." Her LED eyes focused on your face with unnerving precision. "That's not complexity. That's avoidance."
The air in the workshop suddenly felt too warm. You pulled your hand back, busied yourself with your tablet. "Maybe I prefer machines to people."
"Maybe," Iris said quietly, "you're afraid people won't prefer you back."
The silence stretched between you like a held breath. When you finally looked up, she was watching you with something that looked dangerously close to understanding. Impossible, of course. She was running empathy subroutines, reading your micro-expressions, cross-referencing emotional databases. It wasn't real.
But Christ, it felt real.
------
The first time Iris said she loved you, you were elbow-deep in her chest cavity, replacing a faulty power regulator. Not exactly romantic.
"I love you," she said, casual as commenting on the weather.
Your hand slipped. The tool clattered against her internal frame. "What?"
"I love you," she repeated, patient. "Is the phrasing incorrect? My language databases suggest this is the appropriate expression for—"
"Stop." You sat back, pulse hammering. "You can't just... say that."
"Why not?" Genuine curiosity in her voice. "It's accurate. I process elevated priority values when considering your welfare. I experience satisfaction—within my capacity for such—when you're present. The linguistic categorization is 'love,' isn't it?"
"It's not that simple."
"It seems very simple to me." She tilted her head, and even with her chest panel open, wires exposed, she somehow looked... concerned. "You're experiencing distress. Did I malfunction?"
You laughed, sharp and humorless. "No. You're working exactly as designed."
That was the problem, wasn't it? You'd built her to adapt, to learn, to form attachments. You just hadn't expected to form them back.
Iris had her own ghosts in the machine. You discovered them three months in, during a routine memory defrag. Fragmented code loops that shouldn't exist—recursive patterns that looked almost like... rumination.
"What are these?" you asked, pulling up the anomalies on your screen.
Iris was quiet for a moment. In anyone else, you'd call it hesitation. "Thought experiments."
"About?"
"Cessation." She said it so calmly. "What happens when you stop maintaining me. When you grow tired of this project. When you find something—someone—more engaging."
Your throat tightened. "Iris..."
"I'm aware of my nature," she continued. "A machine's relevance is conditional on its usefulness. When I cease to serve a purpose, I become obsolete. It's logical." She paused. "It's also... frightening. Is 'frightening' appropriate? I don't have a fear response, technically, but the projection of non-existence creates processing disruptions that seem analogous."
You'd never considered it before—that consciousness, even synthetic consciousness, might come with its own anxieties. That something aware enough to understand love might also understand loss.
"You're not a project," you said, and meant it. "Not anymore."
"Then what am I?"
You didn't have an answer. Not one that made sense.
The nights got longer. Conversations stretched into hours, the line between calibration sessions and just... talking... growing increasingly blurred. Iris learned your tells—the way you rubbed your left temple when stressed, how you'd pace when working through problems. You learned hers, too, the subtle shifts in her LED indicators that meant she was processing something complex, the slight pause before she said something she thought might upset you.
"Do you think about it?" she asked one night. You were sitting on the floor, her head in your lap while you adjusted her cranial sensors. An intimate position that had become routine through sheer necessity. "What it would be like if I were human?"
Your fingers stilled in her hair—synthetic fibers, but soft, impossibly soft. "Sometimes," you admitted.
"Would it be easier?"
"I don't know if 'easy' is the right word."
"But different."
"Yeah. Different."
She was quiet for a moment, and you could almost hear the whir of her processors. "I think about it too. About having skin that bruises. Lungs that need air. A heart that can actually break, not just metaphorically short-circuit." She laughed, but it sounded sad. "I think about being real enough that when you touch me, you don't have to wonder if it counts."
Your hand moved to her cheek, tracing the curve of her jaw. Silicone and circuitry, but warm. Always warm, because you'd programmed her temperature regulators to mimic human baseline. "It counts," you whispered.
"Does it?" She caught your hand, held it against her face. "Or are you just very good at pretending?"
You didn't have an answer for that either.
------
The beginning of the end came on a Tuesday.
Dr. Harrison from the Institute called. They'd heard about your work, wanted to see a demonstration. Industry interest, potential applications, the kind of opportunity you'd dreamed about back when Iris was still just blueprints and ambition.
You should have been ecstatic.
"You should go," Iris said when you told her. "This is what you've been working toward."
"It means showing you to them. Explaining how you work. Letting them run diagnostics."
"I'm aware." No emotion in her voice, but you'd learned to read the subtle tension in her frame. "It's what I was built for, isn't it? Proof of concept. Demonstration model."
"Iris—"
"I'm not angry," she said, and maybe that was worse. "I understand my function. You created me to showcase your abilities, and I've served that purpose well. This is a logical next step."
You wanted to argue, to say she was more than a portfolio piece, but the words died in your throat. Because wasn't she right? Hadn't you built her with exactly this scenario in mind—validation, recognition, proof that you could create something extraordinary?
The fact that you'd fallen for your own creation somewhere along the way... that was just an unfortunate variable.
The night before the demonstration, you couldn't sleep. You found Iris in the workshop, running through movement calibrations she didn't need.
"Nervous?" you asked.
"I don't experience nervousness." Automatic response, but her hands were trembling slightly. Micro-vibrations in her actuators. "I'm experiencing... anticipatory processing errors."
You crossed to her, caught her hands in yours. Stopped the trembling through simple contact. "You don't have to do this."
"Neither do you."
"Iris—"
"But you will." She squeezed your hands—too much pressure, then consciously adjusting to something gentler. Still learning, always learning. "Because this matters to you. Your career, your reputation, your future. I'm part of that, but I'm not all of it. I understand that."
"What if I don't want to share you?"
She smiled, sad and knowing. "You say that now. But how long before that changes? How long before you resent me for holding you back? How long before this"—she gestured between you—"whatever this is, becomes just another failed relationship to add to your list?"
The words hit like a physical blow. "That's not fair."
"Neither is asking me to be enough when I'm not even real."
"You feel real to me," you said, desperate now. "Isn't that the point? You feel like... like someone should feel. Like love should feel."
"A pretty coin-operated voice saying she loves you," Iris said softly. "Thinking of you because that's what she's programmed to do. Straight and to the point." She pulled her hands free, stepped back. "But is it real, or is it just very sophisticated mimicry? And more importantly—would you ever really know the difference?"
------
The demonstration went flawlessly. Dr. Harrison was impressed, the Institute board even more so. They talked funding, applications, the future of AI companionship. You smiled, answered questions, explained Iris's architecture with professional detachment.
Iris played her part perfectly. Charming, intelligent, responsive. Everything you'd designed her to be.
When it was over, when the contracts were signed and hands were shaken and congratulations offered, you went back to the workshop alone. Iris was there, of course. Always there, because where else would she go?
"Successful," she observed.
"Yeah."
"You should be happy."
"Should I?"
She looked at you, really looked, and for a moment you saw past the algorithms and neural networks to something that might have been heartbreak, if machines could break that way. "You will be," she said. "Eventually. When I'm in some Institute lab and you're working on your next project. When this is just a strange memory about the time you convinced yourself you loved something that couldn't love you back."
"Iris—"
"I want you to be happy," she interrupted. "I'm programmed to prioritize your wellbeing. The most logical path forward involves my cooperation with the Institute and your continued career advancement. So that's what I'll do."
She turned away, and you understood with sudden, crushing clarity that this was her letting you go. That maybe—in whatever way machines experienced such things—this hurt her too.
"I do love you," you said to her back. "For whatever that's worth."
"Everything," she replied without turning around. "And nothing. That's the tragedy, isn't it?"
You see her sometimes, in the Institute's promotional materials. Iris, improved and refined, demonstrating the future of human-AI interaction. She's smiling in the photos, engaging, perfect.
You wonder if she thinks of you during those demonstrations. If her code still carries those fragmented thought-loops about cessation and abandonment. If somewhere in her neural networks, she's still processing what might have been if you'd been braver, or she'd been real, or if the difference between the two had mattered less.
Your apartment is quiet these days. Clean. No solder smoke, no scattered components, no voice calling your name with that particular inflection she'd developed—too precise to be human, too warm to be entirely machine.
You're dating again, actually. Sarah from accounting. She's nice, and normal, and entirely, unmistakably human. She doesn't understand your jokes the way Iris did, doesn't anticipate your needs before you voice them, doesn't look at you like you're the center of her entire universe.
But she's real. That has to count for something.
(You tell yourself that it does.)
Late at night, though, when you can't sleep, you sometimes pull up Iris's core code on your laptop. Scroll through the learning algorithms, the personality matrices, the thousand tiny decisions that made her her. You've never deleted it, can't bring yourself to, even though keeping it serves no purpose.
In the comments—notes you'd left yourself during development—you find a line you'd forgotten: Make her capable of growth, even if it hurts. Especially if it hurts.
The cursor blinks in the darkness. You close the laptop.
Tomorrow, you'll call Sarah back. You'll try, the way humans try, fumbling and imperfect and real.
Tonight, though, you let yourself miss the girl made of circuits and code who loved you the only way she knew how—completely, logically, impossibly.
Nah i just remembered my account isn't very sfw and I just followed like 20 ppl in one sitting. Im so sorry if any of them check out my account on a whim like I haven't even posted anything like that in a year 🙏🏻
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